Yo,
I was purposefully wondering around aimlessly yesterday and saw a poster for a new pizza shop requesting permission to open shop in the neighborhood. I went to city hall to listen in on the hearing and maybe even give my two cents. What happened at that city hall hearing was, to say lightly, strange. After the hearing I seduced the stenographer and made sweet love to her that night. After the rigorous sex session I grabbed the dictation she had made which was sitting precariously on the bed-stand next to the bed. I present to you now, some of what was said that night at the courthouse.
Vinnie's Pizza Shop
Vinnie is the Pizza Man wanting to open a shop.
Anyone else is arbitrary.
Vinnie: Ladies and gentlemen… I’ve traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn’t get away sooner because my new cafe was opening up at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That cafe is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it’s paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others opening and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m a pizza man you will agree.
Judge: Sir, please sit down. Are you are here to open a pizzeria or am I mistaken?
Vinnie: You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you’re not careful.
Judge: Sir?
Vinnie: Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your wives, maybe one in twenty will be pizza men; the rest will be speculators-men trying to get between you and the pizza men-to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to pizza, he’ll maybe known nothing about pizza-ing and he’ll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. This is the way this works.
Man: What is your offer? We’re wasting time.
Vinnie: I do my own pizzaing and the men that work for me, work for me and they are men I know can make a good crust. I make it my business to be there and see to their work on the crusts. I don’t lose my tools in the hole and spend months fishing for them; I don’t botch the saucing off and let water in the hole and ruin the whole pizza. I’m a family man- I run a family business. This is my son and my partner, H.W. Vinnie.
[indicates H.W Vinnie who is picking his nose vigorously]
Judge: Sir, my courtroom and these people who are witness today, do not have time for your jokes. Please descri-
Vinnie: -We offer you the bond of family that very few pizzamen can understand. I’m fixed like no other company in this field and that’s because my Coyote Hills cafe has just come in. I have a string of tools all ready to work. I can load a dough onto trucks and have them here in a week. I have business connections so I can get the lumber for the shop; such things go by friendship in a rush like this.
Judge: You don’t need to build the store. Your going to be leasing a pre-existing building on 23rd and Main.
Vinnie: And this is why I can guarantee to start pizzaing and put up the cash to back my word. I assure you, whatever the others promise to do, when it comes to the showdown, they won’t be there…
———————-
That was the first step into madness. I was looking around the room at this point trying to get a read on people to see if I was the brunt of the joke or what. Apparently there were other people just as confused and scared as I. What happened next was even more shocking and terrifying.
———————-
Vinnie: You’re not the chosen brother, Eli. It was Paul who was chosen. You see, he found me and told me about your pizza. You’re just a fool.
Judge: Stop it right now! I refuse to make my courtroom into the laughing stock of this town!
Eli Sunday: Why are you talking about Paul? Don’t say this to me.
Judge: Who is this man? Eli, please return to your seat!
Vinnie: I did what your brother couldn’t. I broke you and I beat you. It was Paul who told me about you and your secret pizza sauce. He’s the prophet. He’s the smart one. He knew what was there and he found me to take it out of the ground, and you know what the funny thing is? Listen… listen… listen… I paid him ten thousand dollars, cash in hand, just like that. He has his own pizzaria now. A prosperous little business. Three pizzarias producing. Five thousand dollars a week.
[Eli cries swinging his arms into the air]
Vinnie: Stop crying, you sniveling ass! Stop your nonsense. You’re just the afterbirth, Eli. The bad dough.
Eli Sunday: No…
Vinnie: You slithered out of your mother’s filth. You don’t even know how to make calzone.
Eli Sunday: No.
Vinnie: They should have put you in a glass jar on a mantlepiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at your mother’s teat? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli- one of Bandy’s sows? That pizza has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It’s gone. It’s had. You lose.
Eli Sunday: If you would just take this lease, Vinnie…
Vinnie: Bad location! Bad Location, Eli, you boy. It’s been drained dry. I’m so sorry. Here, if you have a pizza, and I have a pizza, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your pizza…kinda like…kinda…like this!
[Vinnie is making a mess]
Vinnie: I… drink… your… pizza!
[sucking sound]
Judge: Stop this nonsense! This courtroom is not a bowling alley!
Vinnie: I drink it up!
Eli Sunday: Don’t bully me, Daniel!
[Vinnie roars and throws Eli across the room landing on the bench seats of the witnesses]
Vinnie: My name is not Daniel! Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen to make this pizza!
[Vinnie grabs a bowling pin and begins to beat-]
————————
Yeah, it just gets worse from there. But the strange thing about this was that the Judge ended up granting the lease and zoning for his light-up sign out front. “Vinnie’s Pizzeria” is what it’s called. I don’t go to it at all because of what I saw that night but I hear from people around town that the guy does a killer Daniel Plainview impression.
-out